In a January 20 press release, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced that the White House had named Mark Christie the new chairman of FERC.

Christie attended public schools of Welch, West Virginia, where he grew up, and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

He is a magna cum laude graduate of Wake Forest University, where he earned Phi Beta Kappa and degrees in History and English.

He earned his law degree at Georgetown, where he completed a summer clerkship after his first year in the FERC Office of General Counsel.

He then taught regulatory law at the University of Virginia Law School, and constitutional law and government in a doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Immediately before joining FERC, Christie was the Chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission (Virginia SCC), on which he served for nearly 17 years. He was elected to the Virginia SCC, which regulates utilities, insurance and banking, three times by the Virginia legislature on bipartisan votes.

During Christie’s service as a state regulator, he was elected president of the Organization of PJM States, Inc. (OPSI), an organization of utility regulators representing the 13 states and the District of Columbia which participate in the PJM transmission and markets organization. He served for more than a decade on the OPSI governing board.

Christie also served as president of the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners (MACRUC), a regional chapter of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

Christie began his term as a FERC commissioner in January 2021, after having been nominated by the White House in July 2020. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2020.

In his comments to being named FERC’s new chair last week, Christie thanked the President for appointing him to lead FERC at this important time. “It is an honor to undertake this job, and I thank the President for trusting me to do it,” said Christie. “Since I arrived at FERC four years ago, I have continually emphasized three priorities and will continue to do so:

“First, the need for FERC to protect consumers from excessive power costs. As a former state regulator, I am especially sensitive to the effect of FERC actions on consumers’ monthly power bills.

“Second, I have repeatedly warned that America is facing a reliability crisis driven by the dangerous pace of retirements of dispatchable generation units and failure to build sufficient new generation.

“Third, I have emphasized the critically important role of the states and their utility regulators in meeting these reliability and affordability challenges. A close partnership between FERC and the states is absolutely essential to address these problems.”

Christie concluded: “I look forward to continuing to work with my fellow commissioners, who are wonderful colleagues, and with FERC’s very knowledgeable, professional and dedicated staff.”